"The Natural Philosopher" <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:slgch5$7id$2...@dont-email.me...
> Well I for one would be interested in people actually listing what they
> did with Pis.
>
> Mine simply sits there running a web server that drives a hifi system from
> music on my server or from internet radio stations. Using a web interface
> as the user interface.
I have two Pis.
Pi 3B+ runs Cumulus weather station software, receiving temperature,
rainfall, humidity and wind readings from a weather station, logging them
and updating a website of them. It also runs a Node app which monitors and
graphs the power consumption over time for a couple of freezers in the
garage (Beko, so rated to well below freezing, before anyone comments!)
using smart plugs: this is a crude way of checking that the freezers are
working properly and have not a) stopped working altogether, or b) started
working continuously because of lack of coolant; ideally I'd use a
remote-monitored thermometer inside the freezer, but I can't find any of
those for sale.
Pi 4 runs TVHeadend PVR software to record TV programmes via DVB-S and DVB-T
tuners. I save the recordings to a spinning (ie not solid-state) HDD which I
SAMBA-share and then edit out commercials/continuity using VideoReDo on
Windows before saving the recordings to shared folder structure on Windows
which can be viewed on the TV via Plex. I also have another folder on the Pi
shared as general-purpose NAS for files that I want to be accessible 24/7
without needing to turn on a Windows PC.
Both Pis run Raspberry PiOS (aka Raspbian). I am cautious about updating
software the Pi 4 after I found that an update (probably to the kernel)
caused a lot of glitches on recordings from the DVB-S tuner, so I regressed
to an older kernel and have stopped updating this Pi. I take images of both
Pis' SD cards every few months so I've got a rollback point. I've also made
copious notes about installation and configuration in case I decide to
reinstall from scratch - as I had to do with the 3B after it refused to boot
after a tidy restart one day: I never did get to the bottom of what had gone
wrong, and it was quicker to reinstall than to spend any more time
investigating.
One cautionary tale. The Pi4 originally used a USB HDD plugged into a
powered USB hub to power the HDD so the Pi didn't have to supply power. This
had worked fine on the Pi 3B, but the Pi 4 refused to boot whilst the hub
was powered; it hung indefinitely until I turned off the hub or unplugged
the hub's USB from the Pi, at which point booting proceeded as normal. Some
people suggested that certain hubs try to feed power back up the USB cable
to the Pi, but I disproved that by making up a special lead on which I had
cut the +5V line - this did not fix the problem. So I now use a SATA drive
in a powered caddy, which works fine.